Vladimir Putin today angrily dismissed protests against his regime as "provocations" and said anyone who took part in unsanctioned street rallies against the Kremlin should expect a "whack on the bonce".

Using characteristic street language, Putin derided Russia's opposition as a group of publicity-seeking malcontents and said they had only themselves to blame if they were on the receiving end of police brutality during anti-government meetings.

Putin's scathing remarks in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper come before protests inside Russia tomorrow as well as demonstrations against the Russian government in several cities internationally. Anti-Putin rallies are due to take place for the first time outside the Russian consulate in Kensington Palace Gardens in London, and in New York, Helsinki, Berlin and Tel Aviv.

For the past eight months Russia's small but vociferous opposition has held rallies in Moscow and St Petersburg on the 31st of each month. Organisers say they will go ahead with a planned rally in central Moscow's Triumfalnaya square tomorrow, despite the likelihood of arrest by riot police who have violently broken up previous gatherings.

Speaking while driving a Lada on a road trip over the weekend in Russia's far east, Putin said Russians needed to get permission before they could take to the streets.

He explained: "You've got it? Go and march. If not, you don't have the right. Go to a rally without permission and you get a whack on the bonce. It's that simple."

Putin said the demonstrators invited the western media along and "poured red paint on their heads" to give the Kremlin a bad name. He said that in London demonstrators who protested without permission also got a "whack on the nut".

Putin made his comments to Andrey Kolesnikov, Kommersant's special correspondent and Russia's best-known print journalist, who travelled with the prime minister along a new federal highway between Khabarovsk and Chita. At one point Putin – Russia's president for eight years and prime minister for the past two – was forced to stop after stones got stuck in the wheels of his sporting Lada Kalina, Kolesnikov recorded.

Writing on his blog today the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said the interview revealed Putin to be "mendacious, ignorant and spiteful". He poured scorn on Putin's claim in it that he had never heard of the liberal rock star Yuri Shevchuk, who has led recent rallies strumming his guitar. "It's like David Cameron claiming he's never heard of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones," Nemtsov suggested.

Moscow's city government has consistently refused to grant permission for opposition rallies, and last week fenced off Triumfalnaya square ahead of tomorrow's protest. Asked why the government seemed bent on thwarting the rallies at all cost, Putin said: "Believe me, I don't know about this. This isn't my affair."

Elsewhere, Putin hinted he intends to continue to play a major role in Russian politics amid speculation he is plotting to return to the Kremlin as president during elections in 2012. He refused to say whether he or the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, would run for office, but told Kolesnikov he would not watch passively if he felt his legacy to the Russian state was under threat. Asked whether he had made mistakes over the past decade, Putin said he could not think of any.

Putin also cast doubt on the apparent reset in relations between Washington and Moscow. He praised the US president, Barack Obama, as "sincere" but claimed the Americans continued to arm Georgia – the Kremlin's least favourite neighbour following the brief 2008 Russo-Georgia war – and had not yet abandoned plans to install a missile defence system in Europe.

Several high-profile Russian exiles are due to take part in tomorrow's unprecedented pro-opposition picket outside the Russian embassy in London. They include associates of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy murdered in 2006, as well as the Cambridge-based Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and the fugitive telecoms entrepreneur Yevgeny Chichvarkin. Chichvarkin fled to the UK in 2008 after falling foul of the Kremlin.

The "Strategy-31" protests are named after paragraph 31 of Russia's constitution, which is supposed to guarantee freedom of assembly.